Brainstorming for digital gardens

[tencurse]

I have a "digital garden" in my local machine via Obsidian, though it's really more used for my story pages and brainstorming. Back when I was refreshing my knowledge on frontend web dev, I also created a bunch of backlinked notes there, which I still refer to now and again.

Thoughts:

Would there be a benefit to making some of these public? My personal site is where I share whatever I want through blog posts, and I don't want to fall into the trap of creating something like this only to abandon it later. I'm also trying to reconcile the idea of posting unfinished thoughts online. (The idea of digital gardens is that these ideas/thoughts evolve over time, as well as doing away with the whole concept of feeds.)

What notes to share? What would be helpful to me and anyone else? Is there a point to creating a guide/tutorial to something that can be easily found online?

There is also the concept of scaling later, ie, just start making notes then organize them later once it grows larger. Which maybe is fine for local file management but might be a nightmare for website navigation. (This would be easy for flat files, aka, just everything in one folder... and just create pages for each tag/topic to "organize" them. <- Would be a nightmare for array filtering.)

Possible tasks, in no particular order:

• Use Johnny Decimal system for the sitemap ??? I use this for my local machine and I'm not sure how effective this would be for a website? Gah!
• Re-think page hierarchy, maybe use 11ty navigation plugin
  • Navigation breadcrumbs can be added at the top, which can help when navigating through notes/pages...
• Add backlinks functionality (which pages? blogs and notes only? all of them?)
• Add a command palette-like search bar to quickly find notes (now this feels like reinventing the wheel when I can do this locally anyways...)

[tencurse]

Also, I've only had my website for less than two months, with only two blog posts so far... Plus, I have two milestones I want to work on before this one. This could be a later thing, I don't need to worry about it for now. But I will keep it open as a reminder.

[tencurse]

What notes to share? What would be helpful to me and anyone else? Is there a point to creating a guide/tutorial to something that can be easily found online?

I think this is where the idea of evergreen notes etc come in, where you try to make new connections based on your notes/inbox to create a new thing instead of just regurgitating another guide/tutorial/blog post/hot take.

Also, in some of the blog posts I have in mind, it's more of detailing the journey of how I made this thing instead of trying to teach someone to do it. So even if someone else had already made a tutorial on making a website, I can still write the same thing but add a personal touch (and also as a reference to my future self and what I've already done/experimented...)

[tencurse]

I do think I should start with adding notes to the site. I already have an idea of what topics these could go under, so it doesn't need to be an entirely flat file system. With the navigation plugin, I think it might be less of a hassle if ever I decide to move the hierarchy around.

So, here's an idea of how this should go, priority- and task-wise:

1. Implement the navigation system (depending on how this goes, it will decide how I will structure the garden)
2. Start with media logs. These are just logs so I don't have to worry about backlinks functionality just yet (and media reviews will come from the blog, which will be linked in the log post)
3. Slowly add stuff in the greenhouse
4. Add backlinks once there's enough connecting notes

[tencurse]

A thought passed in my head today: Is it even worth putting everything in one website? I think it might be okay to separate these things since I also want to play around with layout design. Like, maybe a microwebsite for a personal diary could be a good idea, separate from my personal website.

Now, should I also separate my fanfiction page? What purpose would it serve to have it all in one place vs in another site?

Same goes with the digital garden/wiki.

Ughhhhh.

[tencurse]

I feel like that previous comment's questions would be answered if I also answer the question of: What purpose does my personal site serve? Initially it's for sharing whatever the heck I want through blog posts, i.e., sharing cool links I found and whatever thoughts pop up that I want to permanently share and cement into the Internet.

Fanfiction archive and digital garden both kinda serve that purpose... so maybe it's okay? I'll think about it. For now, I guess I'll put everything in one place.